Two Doors Down
About three weeks ago, I noticed an ambulance two doors down in my condo community and found out soon after that a man who’d lived there with his wife for over twenty years had passed away. I was immediately saddened and stayed that way for sometime. For even though I knew very little about this man, I had seen him and his wife day in and day out while walking my dog Hudson in our neighborhood. He was always kind and Hudson adored him. When you lose someone you’re used to seeing almost every day, even if you aren’t close with them, it’s a loss.
An Unexpected Gift
Shortly after his passing, something surprising happened. I ended up forming a connection with his widow, a woman I had barely exchanged any words with prior. It was clear she was feeling incredibly alone, and we began a friendship. She told me she would like to get to know Hudson better and perhaps watch him when I had to be out for longer periods of time.
Through our talks in passing, and particularly when Hudson and I went over to her home for tea and biscuits (Hudson loved the biscuits), she talked a lot about her late husband. I could tell it comforted her to talk about him and I was more than happy to listen. I learned more about him than I ever thought I would.
He had grown up in South Africa, and had served in the army there. When I inquired about a large painting on her wall, she told me it was a depiction of his close friend who he’d served with and watched die when he stepped on a landmine. She had met her husband later in his life, when he was 60 (she is 30 years his junior). They’d married 10 years later, sort of on a whim, and the only people who attended their wedding were their two next door neighbors at the time who were like family to them. She described her husband as a lifelong learner (their home was filled with hundreds of his books), fiercely stubborn (at times frustratingly so), and said that he had cared for her above all and over everything else in his life. She explained that when they first met, he took care of her almost in a parental way, and later as he moved into old age, their roles seemed to reverse and she began to take care of him that way. It was clear they had loved each other tremendously.
The Lesson
As I learned more and more about him, something occurred to me. Something which, logically, all of us know and yet – it’s so, so important to remember.
Whatever you might think you know about your neighbor – or anyone you encounter in your life – you know next to nothing about what they’ve experienced, done, and gone through in their life. And perhaps more importantly, their story is just as nuanced and complex and meaningful as your own.
So what can we take from this?
Here’s what I think: to be kind.
Whenever possible, whenever you can manage to do so, be kind.
For you have no idea what another person might be going through.
